Hanmer Springs - Picton - Wellington

From Kaikoura we went to Hanmer Springs, famous for its large outdoor thermal pools and spas. You follow the thermal highway in this part of the island so its very easy to find everything..

I didnt think Ger would have went for the spa but we got there and ended up booking a private thermal pool and entry after to all the other 9 pools! It was cool but very weird as it was 9 degrees outside and freezing but 38 degrees in the water so when you got out you had icicles on your hair! well either that or myself and Ger are starting to show our age and our going grey!

But it was cool because you could stay in there for as long as you wanted, however i had forgotten to take off my jewellery so 2 hours later after coming out of the sulphur pools it had all turned black and tarnished...oops!

From here we travelled north via Nelson (and Burger king!) to Picton to get the ferry to the north island. The roads felt and looked like we were in Italy and Ger and I were both getting dizzy with the curvy winding roads....On the roads though it was cool because there really isnt much traffic in the south island, most of what is there are rental cars and vans.
The Ezy Cruisa folks like us are all over the place in their own wee vans and when you pass one on the road everyone is all smiles and waves at each other, it was as if we were all a big family and we had been let loose around the country to explore and when you get chatting to others its the same stories of routes, food and alcohol each time - well funny though!

We got across on the ferry no bother, its a 3hour crossing and we arrived in Wellington in good time in the morning. Immediately we noticed more traffic, cars and people. It was a nice place though and easy enough to drive around and get parking. We also had friendly neighbours in our camp that joined us for breakfast!!

We only spent 2 days here though as we were anxious to get further north and spend more time in Roturua/Tongariro and Waitomo. So the only things we did in Wellington was to go up the cable car and visit the Te Papa museum.

The cable car was grand but the views werent as good as we had expected, but the museum was class.. It was massive and had 5 floors with loads of interactive stuff to do!
On one of the floors was a murder mystery and you had to go around this centre looking for clues as to how and who killed the museum professor! it was well funny and we reckon we solved it by the end of the day...we felt like Poirot and Jessica Fletcher it was good craic!

On the top floor thay have a sculpture terrace as well with like random things showing, very different stuff but cool and in this sculpture it was supposed to reflect the greatness of NZ and the winnebago and the need to travel! Very apt we thought...